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10 Scenes From The Economic Collapse That Is Sweeping Across The Planet
When is the economic collapse going to happen? Just open up your eyes and take a look around the globe. The next wave of the economic collapse may not have reached Wall Street yet, but it is already deeply affecting billions of lives all over the planet. Much of Europe has already descended into a deep economic depression, very disturbing economic data is coming out of the second and third largest economies on the globe (China and Japan), and in most of the world economic inequality is growing even though 80 percent of the global population already lives on less than $10 a day. Just because the Dow has been setting brand new all-time records lately does not mean that everything is okay. Remember, a bubble is always the biggest right before it bursts. The next major wave of the economic collapse is already sweeping across Europe and Asia and it is going to devastate the United States as well. I hope that you are ready.
The following are 10 scenes from the economic collapse that is sweeping across the planet…
#1 27 Percent Unemployment/60 Percent Youth Unemployment In Greece
The economic depression in Europe just continues to get worse with each passing month. According to the Daily Mail, the unemployment rate in Greece has nearly tripled since 2009…
Greek youth unemployment rose above 60 per cent for the first time in February, reflecting the pain caused by the country’s crippling recession after years of austerity under its international bailout.
Greece’s jobless rate has almost tripled since the country’s debt crisis emerged in 2009 and was more than twice the euro zone’s average unemployment reading of 12.1 percent in March.
While the overall unemployment rate rose to 27 per cent, according to statistics service data released on Thursday, joblessness among those aged between 15 and 24 jumped to 64.2 percent in February from 59.3 percent in January.
#2 Detroit, Michigan Is Insolvent And Is Rapidly Running Out Of Cash
I love to write about Detroit because it is a perfect example of where the rest of the country is headed. They have just gotten there first. At this point, Detroit is essentially bankrupt, and the new emergency financial manager is saying that Detroit may totally run out of cash next month…
Detroit may run out of cash next month and must cut long-term debt and retiree obligations, according to emergency financial manager Kevyn Orr’s preliminary plan to save Michigan’s largest city from bankruptcy.
Orr’s report says the cost of $9.4 billion in bond, pension and other long-term liabilities is sapping the ability to provide public safety and transportation. He listed cutting debt principal, retiree benefits and jobs among his options.
“No one should underestimate the severity of the financial crisis,” Orr said yesterday in a statement. He called his report “a sobering wake-up call about the dire financial straits the city of Detroit faces.”
#3 Economic Despair In France
France is going down the same path that Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy have gone. The following is an excerpt from a recent article in the Economist…
HELDER PEREIRA is a young man with no work and few prospects: a 21-year-old who failed to graduate from high school and lost his job on a building site four months ago. With his savings about to run out, he has come to his local employment centre in the Paris suburb of Sevran to sign on for benefits and to get help finding something to do. He’ll get the cash. Work is another matter. Youth unemployment in Sevran is over 40%.
#4 7,000 Abandoned Buildings In Dayton, Ohio
All over the upper Midwest, there are formerly great cities that are dealing with thousands of abandoned buildings. Dayton, Ohio is one example…
Like many urban cities in recent years, Dayton still finds itself knee-deep in abandoned, dilapidated properties as the result of the foreclosure crisis and economic downturn five years ago.
Boarded up buildings that appear to be on their last legs litter the city as it attempts to recover.
Kevin Powell, the city’s acting manager of housing inspection, says officials plan to use $5.2 million — half from the state’s Moving Ohio Forward program and a matching grant from the city’s general fund — to raze 475 abandoned properties by the end of September.
That will scratch the surface of an estimated 7,000 abandoned property problem that is growing.
#5 Overwhelmed By Squatters In Spain
In Spain, unemployment is rampant and people have become incredibly desperate. In fact, in some Spanish cities you can now find entire apartment buildings that are being overwhelmed by squatters…
A 285-unit apartment complex in Parla, less than half an hour’s drive from Madrid, should be an ideal target for investors seeking cheap property in Spain. Unfortunately, two thirds of the building generates zero revenue because it’s overrun by squatters.
“This is happening all over the country,” said Jose Maria Fraile, the town’s mayor, who estimates only 100 apartments in the block built for the council have rental contracts, and not all of those tenants are paying either. “People lost their jobs, they can’t pay mortgages or rent so they lost their homes and this has produced a tide of squatters.”
#6 The Collapse Of Chinese Power Consumption
Energy consumption tends to closely mirror economic activity. That is why the recent collapse of Chinese power consumption is so alarming. The following is from Zero Hedge…
According to CLSA’s Chris Wood using NEA data, China’s monthly power consumption (the most accurate proxy for underlying economic strength according to the current premier) growth slowed from 5.5% YoY in Jan-Feb 2013 to 1.9% YoY in March, the slowest growth rate since May 2009 (as discussed in-depth here).
#7 Horrible Economic Data Coming Out Of The Second Largest Economy On The Planet
The economic data that has been coming out of the second largest economy on the globe has been quite alarming recently…
For starters, China’s recent economic data, as massaged as it is to the upside, is downright awful. China’s PMI numbers were the worst in two years. Staffing levels in the Chinese service sector decreased for the first time since January 2009 (remember that year).
China’s LEI also shows no sign of recovery. If anything, it indicates China is heading towards an economic slowdown on par with that of 2008. And if you account for the rampant debt fueling China’s economy you could easily argue that China is posting 0% GDP growth today.
#8 One Out Of Every Five U.S. Households On Food Stamps
Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps. Today, even though we are supposedly in the midst of an “economic recovery”, food stamp enrollment continues to soar to new highs. The following is from CNS News…
The most recent Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP) statistics of the number of households receiving food stamps shows that 23,087,886 households participated in January 2013 – an increase of 889,154 families from January 2012 when the number of households totaled 22,188,732.
The most recent statistics from the United States Census Bureau– from December 2012– puts the number of households in the United States at 115,310,000. If you divide 115,310,000 by 23,087,866, that equals one out of every five households now receiving food stamps.
#9 Child Hunger In America
Those that work for the big banks on Wall Street may have no problems feeding their children, but overall there is a rapidly growing child hunger crisis in America today. Just check out the following statistics from one of my previous articles…
*For the first time ever, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. That number has risen by 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year.
*In Miami, 45 percent of all children are living in poverty.
*In Cleveland, more than 50 percent of all children are living in poverty.
*According to a recently released report, 60 percent of all children in the city of Detroit are living in poverty.
#10 The Tremendous Suffering Of Hundreds Of Millions Of Desperately Poor People That We Never Hear About
There are billions of people around the globe that are deeply suffering but that do not have a voice. We usually never hear about the desperate poverty that these people are living in, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. The following statistics that Stephen Lendman recently compiled should shock and alarm you…
At least 80% live on less than $10 a day. Over three billion people live on less than $2.50 a day. More than 80% live in countries where income disparity is increasing.
The poorest 40% of world population has 5% of global income. The bottom fifth has $1.5%. The top 20% has 75%.
According to UNICEF, 22,000 impoverished children die daily. They “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”
An estimated 28% of children in developing countries are underweight, malnourished and/or stunted.
How can so many people be living like that in a world with such wealth?
Sadly, things are going to get much worse. The economic and financial systems of the world are rapidly breaking down, and in a few years these are going to look like “the good old days”.
And a growing number of people are starting to realize the direction that things are headed. For example, according to a survey that has just been released, 48 percent of all Americans believe that the best days of America are now behind us.
So what do you think?
Are our best days behind us, or are they still ahead of us?
Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below…
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International News • Now savings could be raided across Eurozone:
Now savings could be raided across Eurozone: Finance chief warns more EU taxpayers could be targeted as Cyprus rescue set to become first of many
Jeroen Dijsselbloem spooked global markets with his comments
He said that owners and investors must be held responsible for failings
EU finance chiefs in last-minute agreement after 10 hours of negotiations
IMF chief: ‘It will form a lasting, durable and fully financed solution’
Savers with more than £85,000 will lose up to 40 per cent of their money
Uninsured funds to be frozen and used to pay off debts in bank restructure
Cyprus will not to need to vote on deal because bank law already in place
But Germany may have to hold vote before agreement can take effect
More than 60,000 British expats live on the island, so many face losses
By JAMES CHAPMAN
PUBLISHED: 18:26 GMT, 25 March 2013 | UPDATED: 22:41 GMT, 25 March 2013
Savers in the eurozone could see their bank accounts raided in the struggle to shore up the single currency, a senior EU official warned last night.
The Cyprus rescue package – under which bank customers will have a chunk of their cash seized to bail out troubled lenders – could become a template for dealing with other creaking banking systems, Jeroen Dijsselbloem suggested.
The remarks from the head of the eurozone’s finance ministers contradicted days of assurances that the Cyprus bank deposit raid was a ‘one off’.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article … z2Oc4ZPvcR
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article … -many.html
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Mon Mar 25, 2013 9:31 pm
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Political Correctness • Fathers disappear from households across America
Fathers disappear from households across America
Big increase in single mothers
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By Luke Rosiak-The Washington Times Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Nicole Hawkins‘ three daughters have matching glittery boots, but none has the same father. Each has uniquely colored ties in her hair, but none has a dad present in her life.
As another single mother on Sumner Road decked her row-house stoop with Christmas lights and a plastic Santa, Ms. Hawkins recalled that her middle child’s father has never spent a holiday or birthday with her. In her neighborhood in Southeast Washington, 1 in 10 children live with both parents, and 84 percent live with only their mother.
In every state, the portion of families where children have two parents, rather than one, has dropped significantly over the past decade. Even as the country added 160,000 families with children, the number of two-parent households decreased by 1.2 million. Fifteen million U.S. children, or 1 in 3, live without a father, and nearly 5 million live without a mother. In 1960, just 11 percent of American children lived in homes without fathers.
America is awash in poverty, crime, drugs and other problems, but more than perhaps anything else, it all comes down to this, said Vincent DiCaro, vice president of the National Fatherhood Initiative: Deal with absent fathers, and the rest follows.
People “look at a child in need, in poverty or failing in school, and ask, ‘What can we do to help?’ But what we do is ask, ‘Why does that child need help in the first place?’ And the answer is often it’s because [the child lacks] a responsible and involved father,” he said.
Dangerous spiral
The spiral continues each year. Married couples with children have an average income of $80,000, compared with $24,000 for single mothers.
“We have one class that thinks marriage and fatherhood is important, and another which doesn’t, and it’s causing that gap, income inequality, to get wider,” Mr. DiCaro said.
The predilection among men to walk away from their babies is concentrated in the inner cities. In Baltimore, 38 percent of families have two parents, and in St. Louis the portion is 40 percent.
The near-total absence of male role models has ripped a hole the size of half the population in urban areas.
Tiny selfless deeds trickle in to fill that hole as the natural human desire for intimacy is fulfilled: One afternoon last week as a girl hoisted a half-eaten ice cream sandwich high over her pigtailed head, Larry McManus, the father of the girl’s sister, bent down to eat out of her hands as he picked up the girls from school.
“I know dads that say they ain’t their kids. I see dads being disrespectful of the mothers. And I see ones who take other men’s kids to football games because they know their fathers aren’t around,” said Mr. McManus, an ex-felon who said he is “trying to make a lot of changes right now.”
Asked his daughter’s age, he consults with her sister.
“Five. She’s in pre-K,” the girl answered.
“She’s 5,” he echoed. “Mmm, that was good,” he said gently of the ice cream sandwich. “Can I have another bite, please?”
Racial divide
Though income is the primary predictor, the lack of live-in fathers also is overwhelmingly a black problem, regardless of poverty status, census data show. Among blacks, nearly 5 million children, or 54 percent, live with only their mother. Twelve percent of black families below the poverty line have two parents present, compared with 41 percent of impoverished Hispanic families and 32 percent of poor white families.
The schism is most apparent in the District, which has a higher portion of two-parent families among whites, at 85 percent, and a lower share among blacks, at 25 percent, than any state.
In all but 11 states, most black children do not live with both parents. In every state, 7 in 10 white children do. In all states but Rhode Island and Massachusetts, most Hispanic children do. In Wisconsin, 77 percent of white children and 61 percent of Hispanics live with both parents, compared with more than 25 percent of black children.
“Something has to be done about it, and it starts with the culture and reversing the attitude that marriage is not important. The president has a role to play in that. He’s a married African-American father who can probably make a huge difference with words alone,” Mr. DiCaro said.
But the move toward single-parent homes has included every race, and from Curtis Bay in Baltimore to Millcreek outside Salt Lake City to Vancouver, Wash., just north of Portland, there are 1,500 neighborhoods with substantial white populations where most white households lack fathers. Maine, Vermont and West Virginia have the lowest dual-parenthood rates for whites.
Southern cross
The decline has hit disproportionately in the South, which considers itself a bastion of traditional family values.
Even in places where the percentage of the black population declined, single parenthood increased over the past decade, The Washington Times’ analysis of census data shows. In South Carolina, where the black share of the population fell by 2 percent, single parenthood rose by 5 percent. In Kentucky and Louisiana, where the black population was constant, single parenthood increased 6 percentage points.
“In places you’d think values are at least talked about, they are not lived out necessarily. Education and income seem to trump them. The people who might not be preaching family values, like coastal upper-class communities, those are the people who are waiting to get married,” Mr. DiCaro said.
The largest geographic area of sustained fatherlessness contains the rural, largely black poor across Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana, tributaries of broken homes running 400 miles along the Mississippi River from Memphis, Tenn., where in some neighborhoods 82 percent of children live with their mothers alone, to Baton Rouge, La., in parts of which less than one-fifth of children have both parents at home.
Black families differ from other racial groups in that the average black single mother has more children, not fewer, than her counterpart with a father present. Hispanic single mothers were most often dealing with the most mouths to feed but still had fewer children than their married counterparts.
To have and to hold
Mr. DiCaro points to a desire among the poor to produce something.
“When you have very little going for you in your life, having children can give purpose to it. If you’re married, you’re going to be much more cautious. There’s health care costs and our jobs, whereas if we were both just kind of doing whatever, then why not just have another kid?”
Mr. McManus is quick to blame the absence of fathers to deaths or incarcerations, though women point out that many absent fathers live around the corner. Mr. McManus attributes that to the young age of many parents who are not ready to be “tied down.” He said women who need help with their children will seek the companionship of other men who they think can be father figures.
Ms. Hawkins, the mother of three, lives with her youngest child’s father but considers herself a single parent.
“When he’s home, he’s watching TV; it’s his time. I get no help. Financially, he’s been a good provider,” she said, even for the children who aren’t his. But “as far as being involved in activities, not so much.”
Her relationship with her eldest child’s father ended over his refusal to support their offspring, and her second child’s father is in prison.
“My oldest was raised by both parents, so it’s just selfish,” she said, but “my middle one, he wasn’t raised by either parent, so he doesn’t know how.”
“We need more fatherhood initiatives,” she said, pointing to government- and nonprofit-funded programs at churches, prisons and community centers, such as those offered by Mr. DiCaro’s group, “so they can see what they’re missing.”
Just then, her daughter Nadya picked up a tree branch and strummed it like a guitar, jumping up and down, all smiles. Ms. Hawkins reconsidered her thoughts on government programs.
“Though to me, that’s the initiative right there,” she said. “You can talk till you’re blue in the face about how to do it, but ultimately, you just have to do it.”
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 … z2GCNoRBE4
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Wed Dec 26, 2012 4:14 pm
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Religion • Re: ‘Church hopping’ more popular in Minn., across US
Spirit moves ‘church hoppers’
Article by: ROSE FRENCH
Star Tribune
July 14, 2012
Sarah Koscielniak raises her hands in worship alongside members of an Ethiopian church congregation.
On another Sunday morning, you might find her at Alley Midway, a Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod congregation. Or maybe Central Mission church, affiliated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination.
"I didn’t want to necessarily tie myself to one specific denomination and church," said Koscielniak, 22, who lives in St. Paul, where she attends the three churches. "They’re [denominations] important and distinctive, but in this time and age, it’s less so, especially for young people who didn’t grow up thinking their denomination was the absolutely correct one."
Koscielniak is part of a small but growing group of Christians nationwide known as "church hoppers." They don’t attend the same church every week but worship at multiple Christian congregations, often of different denominations.
"Church hoppers" sample a variety of worship styles and programs — going to one church because they might like the preaching or the style of music, then moving on to others for their Bible studies groups and youth programs.
Such dabbling is in stark contrast to how most Christians have traditionally worshiped, picking one church and sticking to it week to week. However, denomination loyalty is less important to churchgoers more concerned with meeting their spiritual needs.
"It’s [church hopping] absolutely prevalent," said Scott Thumma, a researcher at the Hartford Institute for Religious Research in Connecticut who tracks church attendance. "It’s absolutely clear that increasingly Americans commodify all their life."
While evangelical Christians tend to be particularly active church hoppers, Thumma said that mainline Protestants and Catholics do so as well.
A recent Concordia College graduate who was raised in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, Koscielniak enjoys seeing how different churches worship, even if they are similar in theology and doctrine.
"Sunday mornings can be a place of exploration to see how other brothers and sisters worship, connecting with people I would have never known if I just stick to one church every Sunday," said Koscielniak, who teaches a Bible studies class to teenagers at Zion Ethiopian Evangelical.
"Centuries upon centuries, there’s been arguments among people of what’s the true doctrine and trying to figure it out. I think being connected to an institutional church … that’s very important and good. But … sometimes we get so tied up to where we will completely cut ourselves off to our brothers and sisters, who essentially believe the same thing, except that there’s some differences in either how we worship or how we interpret scripture."
A pastor’s concern
For pastors, it can be challenging to build relationships with people like her. Religious scholars note, too, that church hoppers are less likely to volunteer or give time or money.
The Rev. Henry Williams, pastor at the nearly 1,000-member Five Oaks Community Church in Woodbury, said he doesn’t think there are many church hoppers in his congregation, but he believes the practice can be "detrimental" to the hoppers themselves.
"It’s not the way it’s designed to work," Williams said. "If you read the New Testament, it’s very clear that it’s all embedded in community.
"There’s nothing wrong with individualism, but when it becomes only about me, only about what I’m learning. I love the music here. I love the preaching here. I love this program. And so I’m hopping all around so I can get what I like … Ultimately if you stay in that stage … that’s not good.
"At what point do you say, ‘Where are you connecting and where are you serving and where are you giving and where are you connecting with people?’"
Nondenominational congregations have continued to grow in recent decades, with close to 12.2 million adherents in the United States, ranking as the third-largest religious body, according to the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. In Minnesota, nondenominational congregations are the fourth-largest religious body with 130,263 adherents.
Thumma, the Hartford scholar, points to their growth as evidence of people’s increased interest in not belonging to just one congregation.
Full time vs. fulfillment?
"I think that whole consumer and individualistic impulse in our society has also lapsed over into our religious life," he said. "Our spiritual needs getting met means that I treat every religious community not as my traditional family ascribed to a religious identity but something that, ‘Does it meet my needs? Does it have services when I need them? Does it have the kinds of Sunday school life I need to have?’"
"Denominational identities still exist and people still think of the differences. But in fact … that is breaking down, the power of that identity to shape the person."
For the past several years, Dan Frankot has attended three different metro churches. When he’s looking for a "contemplative" and "Quakerish" type of worship experience, he attends Missio Dei in Minneapolis, which is linked to the Mennonite faith, Frankot said.
He also attends Woodland Hills church in St. Paul, because he enjoys the "charismatic" services led by Pastor Greg Boyd. Then there’s Solomon’s Porch, an emergent Christian church in Minneapolis that he describes as "laid back," where instead of pews, congregants sit on sofas around coffee tables.
Frankot would feel less fulfilled if he went to only one congregation every Sunday. "I’ve never been able to find one church that answers all my needs and spiritual broadness and experience," he said. "By being broad like this, it’s a richness. It’s like, would you rather be narrow and have two friends or have a lot of friends in your life? And that’s kind of where I’m at. I can’t be narrow anymore."
http://www.startribune.com/printarticle/?id=162436846
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Sun Jul 15, 2012 11:31 am
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International News • Re: Bob Diamond says banks across the world were fixing inte
‘The mob learned from Wall Street’: Eliot Spitzer on the ‘cartel-style corruption’ behind Libor scam
It’s over for the banking cabal.
Watch this video to understand the largest banking corruption scandal in history. These large banks have stolen money from every single human on the planet. Not one person was left out. Not even YOU! Now that it is exposed there is no going back. We will ALL support the "NO MORE BAILOUT" mantra…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UG8RowZ … e=youtu.be
This one will not go away. It was not planned to go away like other "banking scandals". This one will build and build and build until it is known by every man, woman and child on the planet. This is the exposure that will END the bad guys reign.
I’ve said it over and over: Timing, timing, timing.
The evil vampire banksters have been stabbed in the heart with various stakes in the past few months but this one is by far the largest. (note: the last one will be made of SILVER so be ready for it!)
Know this: All is going as planned for the Good Guys.
May the Road you choose be the Right Road.
Bix Weir
www.RoadtoRoota.com
Statistics: Posted by DIGGER DAN — Wed Jul 04, 2012 10:53 pm
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American • Obama increasingly comes across as devious and dishonest.
Not-So-Smooth Operator
Obama increasingly comes across as devious and dishonest.
By PEGGY NOONAN
Something’s happening to President Obama’s relationship with those who are inclined not to like his policies. They are now inclined not to like him. His supporters would say, "Nothing new there," but actually I think there is. I’m referring to the broad, stable, nonradical, non-birther right. Among them the level of dislike for the president has ratcheted up sharply the past few months.
It’s not due to the election, and it’s not because the Republican candidates are so compelling and making such brilliant cases against him. That, actually, isn’t happening.
What is happening is that the president is coming across more and more as a trimmer, as an operator who’s not operating in good faith. This is hardening positions and leading to increased political bitterness. And it’s his fault, too. As an increase in polarization is a bad thing, it’s a big fault.
The shift started on Jan. 20, with the mandate that agencies of the Catholic Church would have to provide services the church finds morally repugnant. The public reaction? "You’re kidding me. That’s not just bad judgment and a lack of civic tact, it’s not even constitutional!" Faced with the blowback, the president offered a so-called accommodation that even its supporters recognized as devious. Not ill-advised, devious. Then his operatives flooded the airwaves with dishonest—not wrongheaded, dishonest—charges that those who defend the church’s religious liberties are trying to take away your contraceptives.
What a sour taste this all left. How shocking it was, including for those in the church who’d been in touch with the administration and were murmuring about having been misled.
Events of just the past 10 days have contributed to the shift. There was the open-mic conversation with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in which Mr. Obama pleaded for "space" and said he will have "more flexibility" in his negotiations once the election is over and those pesky voters have done their thing. On tape it looked so bush-league, so faux-sophisticated. When he knew he’d been caught, the president tried to laugh it off by comically covering a mic in a following meeting. It was all so . . . creepy.
Next, a boy of 17 is shot and killed under disputed and unclear circumstances. The whole issue is racially charged, emotions are high, and the only memorable words from the president’s response were, "If I had a son he’d look like Trayvon" At first it seemed OK—not great, but all right—but as the story continued and suddenly there were death threats and tweeted addresses and congressmen in hoodies, it seemed insufficient to the moment. At the end of the day, the public reaction seemed to be: "Hey buddy, we don’t need you to personalize what is already too dramatic, it’s not about you."
Now this week the Supreme Court arguments on ObamaCare, which have made that law look so hollow, so careless, that it amounts to a characterological indictment of the administration. The constitutional law professor from the University of Chicago didn’t notice the centerpiece of his agenda was not constitutional? How did that happen?
Maybe a stinging decision is coming, maybe not, but in a purely political sense this is how it looks: We were in crisis in 2009—we still are—and instead of doing something strong and pertinent about our economic woes, the president wasted history’s time. He wasted time that was precious—the debt clock is still ticking!—by following an imaginary bunny that disappeared down a rabbit hole.
The high court’s hearings gave off an overall air not of political misfeasance but malfeasance.
All these things have hardened lines of opposition, and left opponents with an aversion that will not go away.
I am not saying that the president has a terrible relationship with the American people. I’m only saying he’s made his relationship with those who oppose him worse.
In terms of the broad electorate, I’m not sure he really has a relationship. A president only gets a year or two to forge real bonds with the American people. In that time a crucial thing he must establish is that what is on his mind is what is on their mind. This is especially true during a crisis.
From the day Mr. Obama was sworn in, what was on the mind of the American people was financial calamity—unemployment, declining home values, foreclosures. These issues came within a context of some overarching questions: Can America survive its spending, its taxing, its regulating, is America over, can we turn it around?
That’s what the American people were thinking about.
But the new president wasn’t thinking about that. All the books written about the creation of economic policy within his administration make clear the president and his aides didn’t know it was so bad, didn’t understand the depth of the crisis, didn’t have a sense of how long it would last. They didn’t have their mind on what the American people had their mind on.
The president had his mind on health care. And, to be fair-minded, health care was part of the economic story. But only a part! And not the most urgent part. Not the most frightening, distressing, immediate part. Not the ‘Is America over?’ part.
And so the relationship the president wanted never really knitted together. Health care was like the birth-control mandate: It came from his hermetically sealed inner circle, which operates with what seems an almost entirely abstract sense of America. They know Chicago, the machine, the ethnic realities. They know Democratic Party politics. They know the books they’ve read, largely written by people like them—bright, credentialed, intellectually cloistered. But there always seems a lack of lived experience among them, which is why they were so surprised by the town hall uprisings of August 2009 and the 2010 midterm elections.
More Peggy Noonan
Read Peggy Noonan’s previous columns
click here to order her book, Patriotic Grace
If you jumped into a time machine to the day after the election, in November, 2012, and saw a headline saying "Obama Loses," do you imagine that would be followed by widespread sadness, pain and a rending of garments? You do not. Even his own supporters will not be that sad. It’s hard to imagine people running around in 2014 saying, "If only Obama were president!" Including Mr. Obama, who is said by all who know him to be deeply competitive, but who doesn’t seem to like his job that much. As a former president he’d be quiet, detached, aloof. He’d make speeches and write a memoir laced with a certain high-toned bitterness. It was the Republicans’ fault. They didn’t want to work with him.
He will likely not see even then that an American president has to make the other side work with him. You think Tip O’Neill liked Ronald Reagan? You think he wanted to give him the gift of compromise? He was a mean, tough partisan who went to work every day to defeat Ronald Reagan. But forced by facts and numbers to deal, he dealt. So did Reagan.
An American president has to make cooperation happen.
But we’ve strayed from the point. Mr. Obama has a largely nonexistent relationship with many, and a worsening relationship with some.
Really, he cannot win the coming election. But the Republicans, still, can lose it. At this point in the column we usually sigh.
http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Fri Mar 30, 2012 1:42 pm
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